Red River Insights - October 2025
It’s still a striking reality: men-only founding teams continue to dominate Europe’s tech landscape, and that imbalance comes at a cost.
In the European deeptech sector, gender disparities in investment have led to a massive €198.8 billion shortfall in potential economic growth, according to the GENDEX Index (European Innovation Council, 2025). The underfunding of female-led startups isn’t just a gender issue: it’s a missed opportunity for innovation and competitiveness.
Yet change is underway. According to the Female Innovation Index 2025, 1,196 startups with at least one woman among the founders raised €5.76 billion across 1,305 rounds in 2024, representing 12% of all venture capital invested in Europe. That share has been slowly but steadily rising from roughly 10% between 2020 and 2022 (Sifted). While that share remains too small, it reflects a fast-growing generation of women founders driving impact and value across sectors. In addition to this, female-founded startups slightly outperform their peers at the Seed stage, with 20% reaching Series A compared to the European average of 18.9%.
Women are increasingly leading the way in AI, deeptech, and health, tackling some of the world’s toughest challenges with cutting-edge innovation. 77% of female founders now leverage AI, and one-third of the capital raised went to deeptech ventures, from synthetic biology to generative AI and drug development.
This month, using RAMP, our proprietary data platform, we’re spotlighting amazing women founders who deserve far more visibility
RAMP's Women-led startups top10
We hope this sparks interesting conversations. If you have any comments or would like to suggest a startup that should be included, feel free to reach out to us. Joseph, Chloé and Olivier will be delighted to discuss these trends and rankings.
(Ranking established on 19/10/2025)
In this edition, we spotlight 16 exceptional founders and deepen our analysis on the Top 50 women-led startups: we’ve highlighted 5 key trends illustrated by these companies.
1. Deeptech is no longer a boys’ club
The most striking pattern across this cohort: women founders are leading Europe’s new deeptech wave (33% of the Top50)
From Cradle (AI-driven protein design) to The Exploration Company (reusable spacecrafts - not technically in our Top 10 this month, as Hélène’s record-breaking round pushed her beyond our selection criteria*, but we couldn’t leave her out 😉), Beyond Aero (hydrogen-powered aviation) and Nu Quantum (quantum networking), these teams are at the frontier of science and computation.
This isn’t about gender diversity for its own sake, it’s about technical ambition. These founders are building companies that require deep domain expertise, long R&D cycles, and the courage to tackle problems others shy away from.
2. AI becomes vertical
A quarter of the companies on our list are AI-native (39% of the top50) and they’re building domain-specific intelligence: Lexroom.ai automates legal research and drafting, Gradient Labs streamlines compliance for financial firms, Portia AI builds authenticated agent libraries, and Pathway redefines model interpretability and reasoning.
On the commercial side, Zeely provides AI-driven tools for digital marketing, while Superscale AI helps brands generate content across social platforms. In the industrial space, Flank is shaping AI workforce governance, and Doinstruct equips frontline workers with intelligent training solutions.
This new generation is making AI tangible and defensible, tied to data, workflows, and measurable ROI. Their products reflect a broader European advantage: vertical depth over scale, building where trust, regulation, and data quality matter most.
3. Building the climate economy
Another strong cluster emerges around sustainability and circular industry (18% of the top50).
From Cylib’s battery recycling and Dioxycle’s CO₂ electrolysis to Fairly Made’s transparent fashion sourcing and Treefera’s AI-powered transparency for nature-based asset reporting, these startups combine hard science with operational pragmatism.
This isn’t greenwashing; it’s infrastructure. They are turning carbon, waste, and materials into assets, aligning perfectly with the EU’s Green Deal priorities and investors’ pivot toward measurable climate impact.
4. Reinventing healthcare
Health innovation remains one of the strongest verticals (20% of the top50), but the approach is changing.
Companies like Elkedonia and One Biosciences blend biology, AI, and personalized data to rethink how care is delivered and drugs are discovered.
Others, like Solence (digital care for PCOS) or Nūmi (breast-milk-based nutrition), focus on underserved patient groups - especially women’s health, historically underfunded and under-researched.
These founders are re-architecting healthcare from both ends: advanced biotech on one side, empathetic consumer care on the other.
5. Mission-driven
If there’s a unifying theme, it’s this: women founders in Europe are building companies that matter. They’re tackling tangible, systemic issues, from carbon emissions to clinical burnout to AI compliance.
Across the 50 names we studied, the most common thread isn’t sector or geography, it’s intentionality.
In a market where noise often wins attention, these founders are quietly setting a new benchmark: deep, durable, and purpose-driven innovation.
Additional facts:
Geographically, the picture is clear: the most represented countries are France, Germany, and the UK, followed by Southern Europe (Italy and Spain). A few outliers from Poland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Slovakia, highlight how deeptech and AI talent are emerging beyond the usual capitals. This distribution mirrors Europe’s broader tech landscape: a Paris–Berlin–London axis still concentrating much of the capital and infrastructure, while Southern and Eastern ecosystems steadily gain momentum.
Among the top 50 we analyzed, 14% have more than one woman co-founder, signaling that women aren’t just entering the ecosystem, they’re building diverse, gender-balanced founding teams from day one.
This matters. Research consistently links mixed-gender teams with stronger culture, better risk management, and higher capital efficiency
Among the Top 50 women-founded startups, 41 % are led by a woman CEO, 27 % have a woman COO, and 11 % a woman CSO. Others hold key executive roles, from CROs and CTOs to CMOs, CPOs, and CCOs. This distribution shows that women founders are not only initiating ventures but also driving execution, science, and growth from every angle.
Note: % of top50 are not exclusive, a company can be both in the Health and Deeptech categories.
*Our ranking only includes companies which raised between 1 and 100m€ in total funding
More on RAMP's scoring method
The ranking of these startups is based on the estimated momentum of the company, but the algorithm does not assess the quality or reliability of the products/solutions developed by these companies!
Find out about the algorithm behind this ranking and the way scores are calculated here: Cheat sheet on RAMP
In case you missed them, our latest top 10s are here: Industrial Autonomy (September25), Advanced Materials (July25), Quantum (June25), Spanish tech (May25) Sport Tech (April 25), HR Tech (March25), Open Source AI (Feb25), Agentic AI (Jan25), French Tech (Dec24)
All the previous Top 10 are here.
Red River Portfolio women founders
At Red River West, we’re proud to stand close to this new generation of women founders, and even prouder to support some of them in our own portfolio.
Shoutout to Hélène Huby, co-founder & CEO of The Exploration Company, building reusable spacecraft to make European space exploration more sustainable; Céline Lazorthes, serial entrepreneur and founder of Leetchi, MangoPay, and of course Resilience, the leading digital oncology platform transforming cancer care ; Claire Novorol, medical doctor and neuroscientist turned co-founder & Chief Medical Officer of Ada Health, one of the world’s leading AI-driven healthtech platforms; Jade Francine, co-founder & COO of WeMaintain, the scale-up using IoT and data to reinvent building maintenance; and Najette Fellache, founder of Speach, empowering teams with asynchronous video and knowledge-sharing tools across global organizations.
Together, they embody the ambition, depth, and global vision we aim to champion at Red River West
Portfolio news:
The Exploration Company has been ranked #27 on the 2025 Sifted 250 Leaderboard, recognizing Europe’s fastest-growing startups, and proudly holds the **#1 position among space-tech companies** this year.
The Exploration Company has also been featured on the Nasdaq Tower in Times Square after being selected for the 2025 Norrsken Impact/100 list, highlighting 100 companies using technology to drive measurable global impact. The recognition underscores its mission to build space vehicles across nations to foster cooperation and peace.
Ada has partnered with Fullspan Health, part of RVO Health, to bring its Clinical AI to millions of Americans, helping users understand their symptoms, connect with trusted doctors, and access the right care faster.
Jiko announced new strategic investments from leading crypto institutions, expanding adoption of JikoNet, its 24/7 real-time settlement network designed to bridge the gap between fast-moving digital markets and traditional banking rails.
Resilience has been named among the Top 20 French startups in LinkedIn’s Top Startups 2025 ranking, recognizing its mission to transform patient care through data and technology.
Resilience has unveiled a new brand architecture bringing together its three core solutions — Resilience Oncology, Resilience Gastroenterology (formerly Guty), and Resilience Psychiatry (formerly Edra) — under the unified name Resilience Care. This evolution reflects the company’s expansion beyond oncology into chronic disease management, with a continued focus on personalized, data-driven care for patients.
Speaking of branding, DeepOpinion has rebranded to Otera, marking its evolution from an automation platform to an Operating System for the Autonomous Enterprise. The new identity reflects its mission to enable agentic AI systems where humans and AI collaborate seamlessly, driving autonomous, high-speed operations for enterprise customers.
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